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DATE: October 1, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Early-life sugar restriction tied to better mental health in adulthood

URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-life-sugar-restriction-tied-to-better-mental-health-in-adulthood/

A recent study suggests that people exposed to post-war sugar rationing from conception through their second birthday had a lower risk of being diagnosed with anxiety and depression in adulthood. These findings provide evidence that early-life nutritional environments can have long-lasting effects on mental health. The research was published in Translational Psychiatry.

The research, led by Hana F. Navratilova and Nophar Geifman, who conducted the work at the University of Surrey, focused on a critical developmental window known as the first 1,000 days of life. Spanning from conception to a child’s second birthday, this is a period of rapid physical and brain growth. Nutrition during this specific time is thought to set the foundation for lifelong health and disease vulnerability.

To study the long-term effects of sugar intake during this period, scientists turned to a unique historical event. During and after World War II, the United Kingdom implemented strict food rationing, which included severe limits on sugar. Sugar rationing abruptly ended in September 1953, creating a natural experiment. People born in the years before this date spent some or all of their first 1,000 days under rationing, while those conceived afterward grew up with abundant access to sugar.

Previous research has used the end of post-war British sugar rationing to show that restricting sugar during the first 1,000 days of life was linked to a lower risk of dementia in older age, as detailed in a 2026 study. Similarly, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 found that this same early-life restriction was associated with a lower risk of asthma and lung conditions in adulthood.

“We have been working on the effects of diet on health using the UK Biobank study that has data from over 500,000 volunteers for some time now, and in particular the effects of diet on mental health,” Nophar Geifman, a professor of health and biomedical informatics at the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey, told PsyPost. “We then came across the study from Gracner and colleagues, published in the leading scientific journal Science, that stated sugar rationing in utero and in early life (first 1000 days) was associated with decreased risk of diabetes and hypertension.”

“This is absolutely plausible, because fetal and infant nutrition is known to influence later metabolic disease risk,” added Geifman, who is also the Director of Informatics for the Veterinary Health Innovation Engine. “But what about mental health? We had access to all the data and a developed toolkit to ask the question and so Dr. Hana Navratilova, our colleague (who was a PhD candidate at the time), put in the hard miles to find the answer.”

Building on this research progression, Navratilova and colleagues tested whether this same early-life nutritional environment was associated with a lower risk of psychiatric conditions, specifically anxiety and depression. They also sought to look at brain structures and dietary preferences to understand how these associations might arise as a person ages.

The scientists analyzed data from 46,448 participants in the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database. These individuals were born between October 1951 and March 1956. The team divided the participants into different groups based on how many days of their early life coincided with the strict sugar rationing period.

For example, the longest-exposed group experienced rationing for about 1,000 days, starting in the womb and continuing up to 24 months of age. Other groups experienced shorter rationing windows, ranging from about 817 days down to 270 days. The primary comparison group consisted of participants conceived well after all food rationing ended in the United Kingdom, meaning they grew up with no restrictions on sugar.

The team tracked medical diagnoses of anxiety and depression using the participants’ linked health records. They also gathered questionnaire data from a subset of participants to gauge their preference for sweet foods and their actual daily sugar intake.

During an average follow-up of about 15.7 years, 2,776 participants were diagnosed with anxiety and 3,147 with depression overall. The results indicate a protective association between prolonged early-life sugar rationing and adult mental health. Participants exposed to the longest period of rationing had a 33% lower relative hazard of being diagnosed with anxiety in adulthood compared to the non-rationed group. In unadjusted terms, 5.79% of the longest-exposed group was diagnosed with anxiety during follow-up, compared with 6.28% in the non-rationed group.

“The size of the UK Biobank volunteer population means we can find a lot of people who experienced sugar rationing in early life,” Geifman explained. “That means our study is statistically quite powerful. Technically this means the so-called Hazard Ratio of sugar intake in the first 1000 days of life links very well to anxiety in later life.”

“This is subjectively pretty amazing, but also, it is a statistically sound conclusion,” Geifman added. “We set out to this work open-minded and as objectively as possible, but the significance of the link to anxiety was highly intriguing.”

Similar patterns emerged for depression. The 1,000-day rationing group had a 29% lower relative hazard of being diagnosed with depression. In unadjusted terms, 6.69% of this group received a diagnosis, compared with 7.23% in the highest-risk group, those conceived just after sugar rationing ended. Groups rationed for about 635 and 817 days also had lower risks for both conditions, while those rationed only in the womb or up to six months of age did not differ from the non-rationed group. This suggests that a longer period of early-life restriction may be needed for the association to appear.

The associations ran in the same direction for both men and women, though they appeared stronger in women. To verify their findings, the researchers checked for links to two conditions not expected to be affected by early sugar intake, type 1 diabetes and PTSD, and found none. They also found no association in a small group of participants born in Ireland, where sugar rationing ended in December 1951, though the authors note this check was too small to be conclusive.

Interestingly, the study found no major differences in the amount of sugar the participants consumed as adults. However, those exposed to the longest period of rationing did report a slightly lower preference for sweet foods, scoring an average of 5.82 out of 9, compared to 6.04 in the non-rationed group.

When the researchers adjusted their mathematical models to account for the participants’ adult sugar intake, the lower risk of anxiety remained, though the authors note this check relied on limited dietary data from a subset of participants. In contrast, the lower risk of depression weakened and became statistically non-significant. This shift suggests that an individual’s diet in adulthood might play a larger role in mediating their depression risk, whereas anxiety risk appears more deeply tied to early-life factors.

“We think that people who look at this study will hopefully recognize that wellness and mental health (especially anxiety) in later life can be influenced by diet in the first 1000 days of life,” Geifman said. “However, that isn’t to say that those first 1000 days are fatalistic, and current food choice of course can shape one’s health.”

Brain imaging analyses also pointed to structural differences linked to early diet. Analyzing brain scans from 5,990 participants, the researchers noted variations in the grey matter volume of certain brain regions. Grey matter is the tissue in the brain and spinal cord composed mostly of nerve cell bodies, which plays a major role in processing information.

While grey matter volume differed across the rationing groups in 80 of 139 measured regions, only 11 of these regions differed between most of the rationed groups and a never-rationed group conceived just after sugar rationing ended. These differences were particularly noted in the brainstem, which sits at the base of the brain and controls basic life functions, and the cerebellum, a structure at the back of the brain involved in movement and some cognitive processes.

The variation in these areas suggests that early-life sugar restriction might subtly influence how the nervous system develops. However, exploratory models did not support brain structure as a pathway linking rationing to lower anxiety.

The findings align with research covered by PsyPost earlier this year, which also linked higher sugar intake to greater odds of anxiety and depression. Similar patterns have been noted in a 2017 study linking sugar intake to later mood disorders, and in a 2024 study by the same Surrey team linking a preference for sweet foods to depression. However, a measurement caveat is needed when comparing these results. The previous studies primarily evaluated adult sugar intake or preferences alongside self-reported symptoms, whereas the new study focused on early-life sugar rationing and formal medical diagnoses decades later.

There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting the new findings. The research relies on an observational, natural experiment, meaning it cannot confirm that sugar restriction directly caused the lower rates of anxiety and depression.

“This study is all about probabilities and potential risk,” Geifman told PsyPost. “Early-life sugar restriction was only associated with altered anxiety risk decades later, there is no attempt on our part to imply causality, i.e. that one leads to the other in all cases of high sugar intake in the first 1000 days of life.”

Other unmeasured historical factors, such as maternal stress during the post-war period or shifts in healthcare policies, might have influenced the outcomes. Rationing also changed families’ whole diets, not just sugar, meaning broader nutritional shifts could have played a role. Additionally, the medical records used to track anxiety and depression largely capture diagnoses made later in life. Mental health conditions were historically under-diagnosed, and many participants might have experienced symptoms in young adulthood that were never officially recorded in their health files.

Future research might explore the specific biological pathways involved in these associations. Scientists could investigate whether genetic predispositions interact with early-life nutrition to shape mental health, or look closer at inflammatory markers in the body to understand exactly how diet translates to psychological resilience.

“We will continue with follow-up studies when more data on primary health care is available from UK Biobank, and for example, when proteomic data is available for all participants and we can explore associations with biomarkers,” Geifman added.

Geifman also thanked the study’s participants. “Just to thank all of the UK Biobank volunteers, your selfless actions are making a difference to human health,” Geifman concluded.

The study, “Dietary sugar exposure in early life and risk of adult mental health disorders: UK Biobank cohort study,” was authored by Hana F. Navratilova, Anthony D. Whetton, and Nophar Geifman.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-life-sugar-restriction-tied-to-better-mental-health-in-adulthood/

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DATE: September 24, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Parents’ genetic traits might indirectly influence a child’s risk for anxiety and depression

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-a-parent-s-genetics-indirectly-shape-a-child-s-mental-health/

A child’s risk of developing anxiety and depression is influenced not only by the genes they inherit, but also by the genetic traits their parents possess. A large study published in Nature Mental Health found that a mother’s genetic likelihood for smoking and a father’s genetic propensity for general well-being help predict a child’s mental health outcomes over time. These results illustrate how a parent’s DNA can shape a child’s environment, creating indirect genetic pathways that affect youth emotional development.

Depression and anxiety are categorized as internalizing problems, which involve directing distress inward. These conditions often take root during childhood and adolescence. Researchers wanted to understand exactly how much of a child’s mental health risk comes from their own biology versus the environment their parents create. Disentangling these two factors is exceptionally difficult because biological parents provide both the home environment and the DNA of their offspring.

Scientists refer to the influence of a parent’s genes on a child’s environment as an indirect genetic effect, or genetic nurture. For instance, if a parent has a high genetic likelihood for depression, that biological trait might influence their parenting style or the emotional stability of the household. The child might then develop anxiety or depression as a reaction to that environment, rather than purely because they inherited the specific genes for those conditions.

Researchers led by Razieh Chegeni, a psychologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, conducted the research to separate these tangled pathways. By looking at a broad spectrum of genetic scores across whole families, the team sought to map how different genetic traits in parents and children combine to influence mental health risk. They were specifically interested in seeing how these patterns change as children grow from middle childhood into adolescence.

To investigate this, the researchers analyzed data from 9,314 parent and child trios, classifying it as a large study. The participants were part of the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. The team utilized 90 polygenic scores to assess the genetic propensities of the mothers, fathers, and children. A polygenic score is a tool that estimates a person’s genetic likelihood for a specific trait based on thousands of tiny variations across their DNA.

The researchers calculated polygenic scores for a variety of traits beyond just mental health. These included body mass index, intelligence, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), smoking habits, and cognitive skills. They then used an advanced statistical technique to sort through these highly correlated variables. This allowed them to identify which combinations of genetic scores best predicted the child’s symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 8 and again at age 14.

When looking at depression at age 8, parental genetics played a heavy role. A mother’s genetic likelihood for having multiple sexual partners or experiencing depression was linked to higher depressive symptoms in the child. The researchers note that these maternal genetic traits might act as proxies for a more unpredictable home environment or reduced emotional availability, which can negatively affect a young child.

As the children reached age 14, their own genetic traits became more influential in shaping their mental health. The child’s own polygenic scores for cognitive skills and ADHD emerged as prominent risk factors for depression in adolescence. A high genetic liability for ADHD often involves challenges with emotional regulation and impulse control, which can naturally elevate the risk of developing depressive symptoms as teenagers navigate complex social environments.

Throughout both developmental stages, a father’s genetic likelihood for general well-being acted as a consistent protective factor against depression. A father with a genetic disposition toward positive psychological traits may contribute to a more resilient and supportive family environment. Unsurprisingly, the child’s own genetic propensity for well-being also insulated them against depressive symptoms at both age 8 and age 14.

For anxiety, the predictive patterns looked slightly different. The mother’s genetic likelihood for smoking cigarettes was the strongest indirect risk factor for the child’s anxiety at both assessed ages. The researchers suggest this might reflect how genetic tendencies toward stress regulation difficulties in mothers can create a sustained environmental vulnerability for the child.

The child’s own polygenic score for well-being provided the strongest protective effect against anxiety across both time points. In contrast to its effect on depression, a child’s genetic liability for ADHD was associated with protection against anxiety. The researchers explain that this aligns with previous studies showing that temperaments with high novelty-seeking and low harm-avoidance are often linked to lower anxiety levels.

The study also examined how the genetic traits of family members might interact with one another. They found that shared genetic likelihoods between both parents for certain cognitive and non-cognitive skills were associated with higher depressive symptoms in their offspring. This highlights how shared traits between partners might compound to create specific family dynamics that influence a child’s emotional health.

Despite the large study size, the total variance in mental health symptoms explained by the polygenic scores was small. The models explained a maximum of 2.7 percent of the variance in depression and 1.2 percent of the variance in anxiety. This small explanatory power means that current polygenic scores are scientific tools for understanding broad population trends, rather than practical clinical tests for predicting a specific person’s future mental health.

The genetic data originated primarily from people of European descent in Norway. Broadening this research across different global populations and ancestries is required to see if these developmental patterns apply to humans universally. Additionally, the genetic scores used for the children were calculated based on adult data, which might not perfectly match how those genetic pathways express themselves during the earlier stages of childhood.

Finally, the researchers note that these associations are observational. The correlations do not confirm that the genetic factors directly cause the specific mental health outcomes, as other unmeasured environmental variables could be at play. Future research will need to incorporate direct observations of parenting styles alongside genetic data to build a more complete picture of how nature and nurture shape youth mental health.

The study, “Direct and indirect parental genetic effects on offspring susceptibility to internalizing problems across development,” was authored by Razieh Chegeni, Ragnhild Bang Nes, Rosa Cheesman, Ziada Ayorech, Eivind Ystrøm, and Espen Røysamb.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-a-parent-s-genetics-indirectly-shape-a-child-s-mental-health/

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DATE: September 22, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Mental health conditions are lasting longer today than they did a decade ago

URL: https://www.psypost.org/mental-health-conditions-are-lasting-longer-today-than-they-did-a-decade-ago/

New research published in Psychological Medicine indicates that common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, are lasting longer for people today than they did just over a decade ago. The findings provide evidence that existing mental health struggles are becoming more difficult to shake, presenting a growing challenge for treatment and long-term care.

Common mental disorders primarily include anxiety, mood, and substance use conditions. Anxiety involves excessive worry or fear, mood disorders involve persistent periods of sadness or elevated mood, and substance use conditions involve an inability to control the use of drugs or alcohol despite negative consequences. In psychiatry, the ongoing presence of one of these conditions over time is known as persistence.

Persistence can be measured in a narrow or broad way. A narrow definition checks whether a person continues to meet the criteria for the exact same category of disorder years later. A broad definition looks at whether the person continues to experience any mental health condition, even if their specific diagnosis has shifted from one issue to another.

Researchers tracking mental health in the Netherlands noticed a concerning trend leading up to this study. According to a 2023 population survey, the proportion of people experiencing these common mental health conditions climbed substantially between 2007 and 2022.

This discovery set off a search for what was driving the increase. Scientists initially wondered if the surge was entirely due to a wave of first-time cases. However, a 2026 study investigating the first onset of these disorders indicated that new cases alone could not fully explain the overall rise in people struggling with their mental health.

This pushed researchers to ask another question: whether people’s existing conditions were simply lasting longer than they used to. The research was led by Artemis Gkitakou, a PhD candidate at the Department of Psychiatry at Amsterdam UMC and the Trimbos Institute (Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction), as part of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Lab.

“The idea for this study came from our previous research, which showed that anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders have become more prevalent over time, and that changes in common risk factors did not explain this increase,” Gkitakou told PsyPost. “We had also found that more people were developing these disorders for the first time, suggesting that increased incidence partly contributed to the rise in prevalence.”

“We wanted to know whether another part of the explanation could be that these disorders have also become more persistent over time,” she explained. “We therefore tested whether people with a mental disorder are nowadays more likely to continue experiencing mental health problems during the following three years than they were 12 years earlier.”

To answer this question, the researchers analyzed data from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Studies (NEMESIS). The project consists of two large, representative surveys of the Dutch general population. The first group of participants were interviewed between 2007 and 2009, with follow-up assessments about three years later. The second group were interviewed between 2019 and 2022, and again followed up about three years later.

In both groups, trained interviewers used a highly structured questionnaire to evaluate participants for anxiety, mood, and substance use conditions. By comparing an older cohort of adults aged 18 to 64 with a similarly aged group from the more recent cohort, the scientists could track changes in persistence over a twelve-year gap. They looked at both narrow persistence and broad persistence across the three-year window for each participant.

The results point to a general increase in how long mental health problems last. Among the older group, 42.7% of people who had any mental disorder at the start of the study still had one three years later. In the recent group, that number rose to 57.9%.

“The difference was substantial,” Gkitakou noted. “Put simply, around 12 years ago just over 4 in 10 people with a mental disorder experienced a disorder during the following three years, whereas more recently this was almost 6 in 10. This suggests growing challenges for treatment, continuity of care, and sustained recovery.”

“I was expecting to see an increase in persistence, but it was unfortunate to see that some persistence percentages were over 50%, so more than half of the people continued to experience a mental disorder during the three-year follow-up,” she added. “It shows that, unfortunately, mental disorders can be quite persistent over time for a large group of affected persons.”

This pattern held true across specific categories. Narrow persistence for anxiety conditions increased from 24.4% to 40.1% between the two time periods. Mood conditions lasting across the three-year gap increased from 33.5% to 48.8%, and the persistence of substance use conditions increased from 33.7% to 45.5%.

The researchers also noted that persistence was consistently higher when using the broad definition compared to the narrow one. For instance, in the recent group, 41.6% of people with an initial anxiety disorder still had an anxiety disorder three years later. But when looking at broad persistence, 57.1% of those initial anxiety sufferers had some form of mental condition at the three-year mark, whether it was still anxiety or a new struggle like depression or substance use.

“The broader perspective is important because people may move from experiencing one disorder, let’s say depression, to another disorder, for instance anxiety, during follow-up,” Gkitakou pointed out. “Recovery should not necessarily be viewed only in terms of the original diagnosis.”

These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2020, which found that individuals typically experience shifting mental disorders across their lifespan rather than maintaining a single diagnosis. While that earlier study tracked diagnostic shifting across four decades in a birth cohort rather than three-year persistence across Dutch adult cohorts, both sets of findings suggest that psychiatric illness tends to cross diagnostic boundaries over time.

Beyond the general increase over time, Gkitakou and colleagues looked for factors that predicted whether a person’s condition would persist. After controlling for multiple demographic and lifestyle variables simultaneously, they identified a few consistent risk factors.

Younger adults and people living in cities were more likely to have persistent conditions. Additionally, individuals who had experienced childhood trauma and those who used drugs on a near-daily basis were also more prone to long-lasting mental health struggles.

The strength of these risk factors did not change much between the 2007 and 2019 groups. This indicates that while conditions are generally becoming more persistent, the basic factors that make an individual vulnerable to a chronic course have remained relatively stable.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on diagnostic interviews that, while highly structured and validated, are still based on self-reported symptoms. The response rate for the more recent survey was also slightly lower than the older one, though the researchers adjusted their data to reflect the general population.

Additionally, the sample sizes for people with specific combinations of disorders were relatively small, making it difficult to detect subtle trends in how highly specific conditions interact over time. Gkitakou also emphasized how the team defined their terms.

“An important point is that ‘persistence’ in our study does not necessarily mean that someone had a mental disorder continuously for all days during the entire three years,” she explained. “We defined persistence as having a disorder at some point during the follow-up period, and people could also move from one type of mental disorder to another.”

Future research might explore what exactly is driving this trend toward longer-lasting mental health issues. Since neither changes in individual risk factors nor differences in mental health care utilization fully accounted for the increase, scientists may need to look at broader societal shifts, such as environmental stressors or economic pressures, to understand why recovery is becoming harder to achieve.

“An important next step is to understand why persistence has increased,” Gkitakou told PsyPost. “We found that persons with younger age, living in a city, with childhood trauma, and with near-daily drug use were most at risk for persistence of disorders, but these groups were not more prevalent over time, so these factors do not explain the increase over time.”

“Future research should investigate additional societal, environmental, and healthcare-related factors, follow these trends over a longer period, and examine whether greater continuity of care and attention to diagnostic transitions can help improve sustained recovery,” she noted.

“I see this study as one step toward understanding why common mental disorders have become more prevalent over time,” Gkitakou added. “NEMESIS gives us a valuable opportunity to study diagnosed mental disorders in the general Dutch population and to compare their course across different periods. I hope these findings encourage greater attention not only to preventing and treating mental disorders, but also to long-term recovery and continuity of care.”

The study, “Are common mental disorders more persistent over time? Insights from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incident Studies (NEMESIS),” was authored by Artemis Gkitakou, Margreet Ten Have, Neeltje M. Batelaan, Annemarie I. Luik, and Brenda W.J.H. Penninx.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/mental-health-conditions-are-lasting-longer-today-than-they-did-a-decade-ago/

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Strong gut-brain link may worsen mental health https://www.byteseu.com/1295495/ #AnxietyAndDepression #BrainBodyConnection #EntericNervousSystem #GutBrainAxis #Health #MentalHealthResearch #StomachRhythms #StomachBrainConnection #VagusNerveStimulation

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